Daniel Stepner
Daniel Stepner, as Aston Magna’s Artistic Director, has programmed and led vocal and instrumental music dating from 1589 through the 1850s, featuring period instruments and vocal styles. Aston Magna repertoire has included everything from music for solo violin to early baroque opera, such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne. Mr. Stepner is also first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet (Artists in Residence at Brandeis University) and a founding member of the Boston Museum Trio (resident at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts for 27 years). For the last 21 years, under Thomas Dunn, Christopher Hogwood and Grant Llewellyn, he has been the concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s oldest continuing musical organization. He is also a Preceptor in Music at Harvard University, where he team-teaches a course in the performance and analysis of chamber music with Robert Levin. In solo recital, chamber and orchestral settings, and in the theater, he has performed music from 1589 through 2008. Mr. Stepner has recorded baroque sonatas by Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Marais; major chamber works of Schubert, Brahms, John Harbison, Peter Child and Yehudi Wyner and violin and piano sonatas of Charles Ives with pianist John Kirkpatrick. For Aston Magna, he has led recordings of cantatas of J. S. Bach, chamber works of Mozart and Schubert and an acclaimed recording of Handel’s oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, and Monteverdi’s pioneering opera Orfeo. He has held concertmasterships for Boston Baroque, The Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and New Haven Symphony, and for six years was assistant concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, based in Holland. As a touring musician, he has played in 11 countries in Western Europe and the former Soviet Union, and throughout Australia and the United States. Mr. Stepner is a native of Wisconsin, and his major teachers were Steven Staryk in Chicago, Nadia Boulanger in France and Broadus Erle at Yale, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Presently on the faculties of Brandeis and Harvard Universities, he has taught violin, chamber music and performance practice at the New England Conservatory, Eastman School, Boston University and the Longy School.
Jennifer Ellis
Soprano Jennifer Ellis, who “offers a freshness of voice, fineness of timbre, and ease of production that place her in the front rank of early-music sopranos,” (andante.com) is emerging as one of the leading interpreters of the baroque repertoire. Her international career has included appearances with the period instrument groups Washington Bach Consort, American Bach Soloists, New York Collegium, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, El Mundo, Apollo’s Fire, Musica Angelica, Magnificat, Ensemble Solamente (Budapest, Hungary), Ensemble Tourbillon (Prague, Czech Republic) and Musica Aeterna (Bratislava, Slovakia). Opera highlights include leading roles in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, Duron’s zarzuela Salir el Amor del Mundo, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. A specialist in the music of Spain and Latin America, Ms. Ellis has toured villancicos and zarzuelas extensively with Richard Savino and El Mundo. In addition, Ms. Ellis has sung with the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Charlotte Symphony and the Berkeley Symphony. She has been heard in many concert series and festivals including Houston Early Music, Music Before 1800, Connecticut Early Music, Carmel Bach and the Berkeley and Boston Early Music Festivals. Ms Ellis has recorded the works of Cozzolani (Gramophone editors pick, August 2002) for Musica Omnia, Carissimi Motets and Cantatas for Hungaroton and Monteverdi Vespers for Eclectra. She was awarded first prize in the Berkeley Piano Club Voice Competition, finalist in the Early Music America Medieval/Renaissance Competition, first runner up at the 2000 Bethlehem Bach Vocal Competition the Adam’s Fellowship at the Carmel Bach Festival, and performed at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan with Nicholas McGegan. Born in San Francisco and a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Guildhall School of Music in London, Ms. Ellis currently lives in New York City.
Guy Fishman
Guy Fishman made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005 with the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra, which he joined in 2002 as their youngest principal player. That same year he joined Boston Baroque, and since that time he has been in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, performing in recital and with Apollo’s Fire, Emmanuel Music, and the Boston Museum Trio, as well as with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and The Mark Morris Group, among others. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by The New York Times, and “beautiful….noble” by the Boston Herald. Mr. Fishman started playing the cello at age 12, and at 16 began his Baccalaureate studies with David Soyer at the Manhattan School of Music. He subsequently worked with Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten and Laurence Lesser, with whom he completed Doctoral studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition, he is a Fulbright Fellow, having worked with famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam. He has recorded for the Centaur, Telarc, Titanic, and Newport Classics labels. He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler.
Stephen Hammer
Stephen Hammer enjoys a varied musical life playing and teaching oboes of all periods. He is principal oboist of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, Concert Royal, the Bach Ensemble, the Clarion Music Society, the Columbia Festival Orchestra, and the New York Collegium, of which he was also a co-founder and served as Artistic Director for two seasons; he also plays recorder regularly with the Metropolitan Opera and Yamaha wind synthesizer with the Neptune Philharmonic jazz trio. His solo, chamber and orchestral recordings appear on Decca, L’Oiseau-lyre and many other labels. He teaches oboe and performance practice at Bard College and the Longy School of Music and collaborates with instrument-maker Joel Robinson in building replicas of historical wind instruments. Stephen Hammer has participated in Aston Magna festivals and academies since 1977, and lives in the town of Clermont, NY in the beautiful Hudson River valley.
Eric Hoeprich
For the past twenty-five years Eric Hoeprich has specialized in performing on historical clarinets, in music from the Baroque to the late Romantic. Educated at Harvard University and the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, he is currently on the faculties of the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague and at Indiana University, Bloomington. A founding member of Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the 18th Century (1982), Hoeprich has performed frequently as a soloist with this orchestra, as well as many of the major early music ensembles, under conductors such as Nicholas McGegan, Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, Philippe Herreweghe, Michael Willens and Jos van Immerseel. Also a variety of other orchestras such as Akamus (Akademie für Alte Musik) the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra have invited him as a soloist. In the 1980s, he founded two wind ensembles, NACHTMUSIQUE and the Stadler Trio (three basset horns), which have toured around the world. His dozens of recordings are available on labels such as Deutsche Grammaphon, Philips, EMI, SONY, Harmonia Mundi, Glossa and Decca. Collaboration with string quartets, chamber ensembles and vocal soloists also feature regularly on his calendar. The recent release of clarinet quintets (Mozart and Brahms) with the London Haydn Quartet (Glossa), and the three clarinet concertos by Bernhard Crusell with Kölner Akademie (ARS Production) and has received wide critical acclaim.
Recent press:
The real pleasure was in Hoeprich’s flawless technique and
molten-gold tone… the high point was the radiant Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581, played by Hoeprich on a re-creation of an 18th-century basset clarinet. With its peculiar bulbous end, the thing looks downright cartoonish, but its sound just shimmers — and Hoeprich’s mastery of the piece made a perfect close to an altogether fascinating evening.
- The Washington Post
An interest in historical clarinets has led to the publication of numerous articles, and a general text on the clarinet published by Yale University Press (The Clarinet, 2008). Hoeprich has amassed a collection of more than a hundred antique clarinets, including instruments from the eighteenth century, which has led to restoration and construction of replicas of period originals; he maintains a workshop for instrument making at his home near London.
Laura Jeppesen
Laura Jeppesen is a graduate of the Yale School of Music. She is the principal violist of Boston Baroque, gambist of the Boston Museum Trio, and plays in many early music groups, including the Handel and Haydn Society, The Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Aston Magna and the Carthage Consort. She has been a Woodrow Wilson Designate, a Fellow of Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Studies, and a Fulbright Scholar. In 2006, the Independent Critics of New England nominated her for an IRNE award for the score she produced as music director of the American Repertory Theater’s staging of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage. She has performed as soloist under conductors Christopher Hogwood, Edo de Waart, Seiji Ozawa, Martin Pearlman, Grant Llewellyn and Bernard Haitink. Her extensive discography includes music for solo viola da gamba, the gamba sonatas of J. S. Bach, Buxtehude’s Trio Sonatas opus 1 and 2, Telemann’s Paris Quartets, and music of Marin Marais. She teaches at Boston University and Wellesley College.
Frank Kelley
Frank Kelley sings a wide variety of music throughout North America and Europe. He has performed many roles with the San Francisco Opera Company and the Boston Lyric Opera, has appeared at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Franfurt Opera and in the Peter Sellars productions of Die sieben Todsünden, Das kleine Mahagonny, Cosi fan tutte, and Le nozze di Figaro. The Mozart operas were recorded by Decca and Austrian Public Television, and were broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances. They are available on the London label as is Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden. In concert performances Mr. Kelley has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony, Dallas Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He has performed Medieval and Renaissance music with Sequentia, the Boston Camerata and The Waverly Consort, and he performs baroque music with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, Music of the Baroque and Aston Magna. Mr. Kelley has participated in the Blossom Festival, Tanglewood Festival, Ravinia Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Pepsico Summerfare, Nakamichi Festival, New England Bach Festival, Next Wave Festival, Wexford Festival Opera and Boston Early Music Festival. He has recorded for London, Decca, Erato, Harmonia Mundi France, Teldec, Telarc, Koch International, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Arabesque, and Northeastern. A resident of Boston, Mr. Kelley sings there regularly with Emmanuel Music, both in the ongoing series, which presents the complete Bach cantatas, and in special projects including the complete vocal works of Schumann, Brahms and Schubert, Don Giovanni, The St. Matthew Passion, Samson and, most recently, The Magic Flute. He is on the voice faculty of Boston University.
Christopher Krueger
Christopher Krueger has performed as principal flutist with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops and Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Opera Company of Boston, Boston Ballet, Boston Musica Viva, and Cantata Singers, among other organizations. As a baroque flutist he has been a soloist on the Great Performers Series and Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Bach Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, the Berlin Bach Festival, the City of London Festival, and the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, as well as in France, Belgium, Italy, and Poland. He is a member of the Bach Ensemble, Collage New Music, and the Aulos Ensemble, and is principal flutist with the Handel & Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. Christopher Krueger has conducted and been a soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music, and his recordings can be heard on Sony, DG, Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Pro Arte, CRI, Telarc, Koch, and Centaur. Mr. Krueger is on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, and Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute. He is Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Julie Leven
Julie Leven is a principal player in the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. In June 2004, she made her Los Angeles solo debut in Disney Hall. She has many times been a featured soloist, with Daniel Stepner and Boston Baroque, in concertos of Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann. As a guest soloist with the Boston Museum Trio it has been her particular pleasure to play the chamber music of Bach, Telemann, Buxtehude, and Purcell. Ms. Leven is concertmaster of the Bach and Beyond Festival, and has participated in the Krakow/Warsaw Easter Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, Spoleto Festival, Colorado Music Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Center.
As a member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Ms. Leven has performed throughout the US, Japan, and Korea. She has been a member of the Jerusalem Symphony, and the Aarhus Symfonieorkester in Denmark. With these orchestras she has toured throughout Germany, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. She has recorded with Telarc, Decca, Harmonia Mundi, and Titanic. Ms. Leven can be heard as a soloist on two Telarc recordings of Boston Baroque: Handel Opus 6 Concerti Grossi, and the 1999 Grammy nominated performance of the Monteverdi Vespers.
Cathy Liddell
Catherine Liddell performs on a variety of Renaissance and Baroque plucked instruments and specializes in realizing continuo accompaniments on the theorbo and lute. She has given solo concerts and toured widely as a guest artist with many of America’s leading period instrument ensembles including the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, New York Collegium, and in the Aston Magna and Boston Early Music Festivals. Ms. Liddell is a founding member of Ensemble Chanterelle, with whom she was Artist-in-Residence at UCLA, and of Charivary, finalist in the 2001 EMA/Dorian Recording Competition. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Ms. Liddell holds the soloist diploma from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied Renaissance and Baroque lute with Eugen Dombois. She has recorded for EMI, Musical Heritage Society, Titanic Records, and her solo CD, La belle voilée: 17th Century French Lute Music by Jacques Gallot, is available on the Centaur label.
David Miller
David Miller holds an undergraduate liberal arts degree from Oberlin College and a graduate music degree in viola from The Juilliard School. A devoted performer of chamber music on period instruments and a pioneer of early music performance in this country, he is a founding member of the Classical Quartet, Haydn Baryton Trio, Bach Ensemble and Concert Royal. He has performed with Aston Magna every season since 1974 and has appeared frequently as a guest artist with the Mozartean Players and Helicon. Mr. Miller plays principal viola for numerous Baroque and Classical orchestras including the Handel and Haydn Society, New York Collegium, Boston Early Music Festival and American Classical Orchestra. Notable chamber music appearances at summer festivals include Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, Tanglewood Festival, Festival of Perth (Australia), Lufthansa Festival (London) and the Esterhazy Palace (Eisenstadt, Austria). His many recordings of solo and chamber works can be heard on Decca, Dorian, Harmonia Mundi, EMI, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, among others. Mr. Miller has taught viola at Princeton University and at the Akademie für Alte Musik in Brixen, Italy.
Loretta O’Sullivan
Loretta O’Sullivan has appeared on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center, at the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum, and Merkin Concert Hall, and recorded for Gaudeamus as a member of the Four Nations Ensemble. As member of the Haydn Baryton Trio and the Classical Quartet, she toured throughout Europe and recorded for Dorian, Titanic and Harmonia Mundi. Ms. O’Sullivan has played continuo cello for many ensembles including Opera Lafayette, Florida Grand Opera, the New York Collegium, Aston Magna, American Bach Soloists, Bach Choir of Bethlehem and The Grand Tour. She frequently plays with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Her performances for solo cello in recent years have included the Bach Suites, her transcription of Heinrich Biber’s Passacaglia, and Benjamin Britten’s Third Suite. In collaboration with Larry Lipkis, she gave a pre-concert lecture for Yo Yo Ma’s performance of the Bach Suites in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Peter Sykes
Peter Sykes performs widely in the US and in Europe on the harpsichord, organ, clavichord, and fortepiano. He has recorded ten solo CD recordings of organ and harpsichord music, including his best-selling organ transcription of “The Planets” of Gustav Holst, and appears as a soloist and continuo player on recordings with Boston Baroque, Music from Aston Magna, and the Cambridge Bach Ensemble. He has recently completed a two-year benefit recital series (“Tuesdays with Sebastian”) in which he and Christa Rakich performed the complete works of Bach for organ and harpsichord in thirty-four concerts at five locations in the greater Boston area. In May 2005 he was honored by the New England Conservatory with its Outstanding Alumni Award. He is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, Director of Music at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, and instructor of organ, harpsichord and chamber music at the Longy School of Music.
Deborah Rentz-Moore
Hailed for her “deep, honeyed voice” (Graham Watts, Ballet.com Magazine), mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore performs with some of the most celebrated ensembles in North America, including the Handel & Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, The Boston Camerata, Ensemble Très., The Boston Early Music Festival, Aston Magna, New York Collegium and the Mark Morris Dance Group. A specialist in early music, she also performs opera, oratorio, chamber and contemporary music. This season includes separate appearances as both Dido and the Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Messiah with Worcester Chorus, a Spanish baroque program with Musicians of the Old Post Road, “Borrowed Light” with The Boston Camerata and Tero Saarinen Dance Company, Israel in Egypt with The Newton Choral Society, St. John Passion with Masterworks Chorale and Mass in Time of War with Berkshire Concert Choir. Aston Magna also featured Ms. Rentz-Moore in a program of Purcell and Handel this past May.
Her recordings include music of J. S. Bach and Cozzolani on the Musica Omnia label, Shaker songs on Glissando, baroque holiday selections with Très., and Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Aston Magna. A recording of Spanish baroque holiday music is forthcoming in late 2008.
David Ripley
David Ripley’s recent performance highlights include Brahms German Requiem with the Boston Civic Symphony, concerts in Paris, Brussels, Moscow and St. Petersburg with Boston Musical Theatre, national tours of The Christmas Story with The Waverly Consort, and Schubert’s Die Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin song cycles. In April of 2007 Mr. Ripley performed in two contemporary concerts at Brandeis University and was earlier featured in Peter Childs’ one act opera, Embers, on the play by Samuel Beckett. Mr. Ripley’s recording of Ich habe Genug with the Aston Magna on Centaur Records has won fine praise. All That Jazz, live from Rachmaninoff Hall and We’ll Meet Again featuring songs of the World War II era are available through Boston Musical Theater. Two solo CD’s A New Season feature the works of Ives, Fauré, Schubert and Brahms. Ne Point Passe (To Never Pass Away), with songs of Fauré and Duparc, (Centaur) received high praise in the American Record Guide. Upcoming events include the New York Cabaret Festival at Lincoln Center and a trip to South Korea with Boston Musical Theater. An honors graduate of Harvard College and the New England Conservatory of Music, he was recently selected as the 2007 recipient of the Outstanding Associate Professor Award at the University of New Hampshire where he teaches voice and directs the opera program. The award is “to recognize an associate professor whose accomplishments in the area of teaching, research and service are prodigious and of the highest quality.
Richard Savino
Richard Savino’s performances and recordings have received critical acclaim from critics and audiences alike. His recordings (solo, chamber and concerto) for Koch International, Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Stradivarius and Cantilena record companies demonstrate an extraordinary breadth of repertoire ranging from the early Baroque through contemporary music. In addition to receiving a Diapason d’Or from Compact (Paris) and a 10 du Rèpertoire (Paris) the latter has also placed his Boccherini recordings (3 CDs) in their “Great Discoveries” category, which they deem as essential to any classical music collection. His recording of music for the baroque guitar by Santiago de Murcia (Koch) CD was the “Global Hit” on the Public Radio International program The World, and “CD of the month” for the German periodical Alte Musik Aktuell. An active continuo player and chamber musician, he performs regularly with internationally renowned colleagues, orchestras and opera companies. As director of the ensemble El Mundo, he has recorded the music of Giovanni Legrenzi (Venice Before Vivaldi, Koch) and has a new recording of Latin American Baroque music entitled Villancicos y Cantadas. From 1986 to 1998 Mr. Savino directed the CSU Summer Arts Guitar and Lute Institute and in 1995 was a Visiting Artistic Director at the prestigious NEH sponsored Aston Magna Academy at Rutgers University. Mr. Savino received his Doctoral degree from SUNY Stony Brook and has had articles and editions published by Cambridge University Press, Editions Chantarelle and Indiana University Press. Currently he is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is a Professor of Music at CSU Sacramento where he has been the only music professor to receive “outstanding and exceptional” and “best” sabbatical awards.
Nel Snaidas
Nell Snaidas began her professional career while still a student at the Mannes College of Music singing leading roles in zarzuelas at NYC’s Repertorio Español; specialization in Italian and Spanish Baroque music has since taken her all over Europe and North America. Recent projects include her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in John Adams’ “Grand Pianola Music“, creating the role of “Olga” in the world premiere of the Baroque opera Boris Goudenow at the Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston and at Tanglewood, a North American Tour of “Le Canterine Romane” with Tragicomedia and a tour of Mexico with her own all-female Baroque/New Music ensemble, RECONSTRUCTION. Nell starred internationally as “Christine” in The Phantom of the Opera, was a featured soloist in the concert version of the musical HAIR on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theater and can be heard in Mel Brooks’ major-motion picture musical, The Producers. Ms. Snaidas has recorded for Dorian with Ex Umbris, Koch, Sefarad, Classical Recordings London and Naxos with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Her voice is also heard, with Hesperus, on the Emmy Nominated soundtrack of the film “Patrick” on the Hallmark channel.
Michael Sponseller
Harpsichordist Michael Sponseller has appeared throughout Europe and North America with critical acclaim as a soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. Winner of the American Bach Soloists Competition (1998) and the Jurow International Harpsichord Competition (2002), he holds the distinction of being a two-time prizewinner at the Festival of Flanders International Harpsichord Competition (Bruges), as well as taking prizes in Montréal and Kalamazoo. In addition to holding degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, Michael was a teacher of harpsichord at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. Mr. Sponseller can also be heard on several recordings from Electra, Vanguard Classics, Naxos, Delos and Centaur. In 2006, Michael was named Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow by Boston’s Emmanuel Music, in recognition of his achievements as emerging young artist. The following year, he founded Ensemble Florilege, (www.ensembleflorilege.org) a chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of lesser-performed repertory of the 17th & 18th centuries.
Anne Trout
Bassist Anne Trout is active as a chamber and orchestral musician throughout the North America. She has performed with many prominent ensembles sized five to 50 and recorded for Telarc, Sony Classical, Chandos, London, Musica Omnia, Centaur and others. In Boston she has served has been a principal player for the Handel and Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Bach Ensemble and Boston Baroque. She has appeared on NPR’s Performance Today and can be heard often on WQXR live broadcasts. She frequently performs with REBEL, the New York-based chamber ensemble, in its national tours and its residency at Trinity/Wall St. Church in lower Manhattan. Recent engagements have included the PROMS in London with Sir Roger Norrington, New York Collegium, Clarion Society (NY) and Mark Morris “Dido and Aeneas” conducted by Mark Morris, Haydn Masses with Jane Glover (NY), Saint Matthew Passion with the Grand Tour Orchestra (NY), Arcadia Players with Ian Watson, the Providence-based women’s ensemble Foundling, a Music for Shakespeare program with actors’ readings led by Philip Pickett. Recently released recordings include the Aston Magna Monteverdi “Orfeo” and a premier disk of works by Fasch with the Philadelphia-based Tempesta di Mare. Ms. Trout serves on the faculties of the Groton School, Boston College and Longy School in Cambridge.
Kristen Watson
Soprano Kristen Watson, hailed by critics for her “blithe and silvery” tone and “winning stage presence,” recently made solo debuts at Ravinia, Tanglewood and Disney Hall, singing Monteverdi’s Vespers with Boston Baroque. This past April, she made her New York City debut with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in a program of Bach cantatas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Watson has frequently soloed with the Handel and Haydn Society as well as Emmanuel Music, appearing in their production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (2nd Lady/2nd Witch), in collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group. Opera audiences have heard her with Boston Lyric Opera, Opera New England, Boston University Opera Institute, the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh and Opera Boston, with whom she performed in Osvaldo Golijov’s acclaimed new opera Ainadamar (Voice of the Fountain), directed by Peter Sellars. A versatile crossover artist, Ms. Watson has appeared at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops as the featured soprano on their “Holiday Pops” program and “Mozart’s Greatest Hits,” under conductor Keith Lockhart. Other engagements include the Carmel Bach Festival, Cactus Pear Music Festival, Evansville Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Topeka Symphony, and the Pittsburgh Camerata. Ms. Watson is originally from Topeka, Kansas.
Nancy Wilson
With a repertoire ranging from early 17th-century violin solos to the string quartets of Beethoven and Schubert, Nancy Wilson is known as one of the leading early music violinists in the United States. A founding member of many of American’s pioneering period instrument ensembles, including Concert Royal, the Bach Ensemble and the Classical Quartet, she performs regularly with Aston Magna and has worked extensively with the Smithsonian Chamber Players. She has worked as concertmaster and soloist with leading conductors in early music, Jaap Schroeder, Christopher Hogwood and Nicholas McGegan among them, regularly leads period orchestra performances in New York City and the metropolitan area, and has a considerable discography to her credit. Her solo playing has been called “clear and sweet in tone, refined in articulation” by Gramophone, and “exceptionally stylish” by The Edinburgh Scotsman. A native of Detroit, Ms. Wilson holds degrees from Oberlin College and The Juilliard School. She has been invited as guest lecturer and clinician at workshops and music schools throughout theUnited States and Europe, currently teaches at The Mannes College of Music in Manhattan and Princeton University and has served on the faculty at the Academies of Aston Magna. Ms. Wilson can be heard in Philadelphia with Philomel, as director of Princeton University’s Richardson Baroque Players and in collaboration with Westminster Choir College and Fuma Sacra in Princeton.
Ronnie Boriskin
Ronnie Boriskin, Aston Magna’s Executive Director, has more than three decades’ experience working with some of this country’s most important cultural institutions, including The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City (where she led the creation and subsequent expansion of both its fund‑raising and public relations programs), Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (where she secured the first corporate underwriting grants for concerts and lectures, balancing the budget for the first time in their history), and Columbia Artists Management (where she was responsible for the business management of over 700 Community Concerts series). She has been invited to serve as grants panelist for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, is a former member of the Board of Directors and past Treasurer of Early Music America, and has served as consultant for numerous arts and educational institutions nationwide. A former cellist, she holds a Master of Arts degree in Musicology from Queens College of the City University of New York and a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Hunter College.